Saturday, December 31, 2016

Which doesn't change the fact that government isn't very efficient at protecting us of course. It does, however, underline the reality that, if we don't want government doing the job, then we have to do it ourselves. Something not very likely if we stick with this very out of date system.

Before Congress stepped in, medical fraud was everywhere in America. And while useless medicines were annoying, a greater risk to the public came from how many of these medicines used real and potent ingredients.

You would think that, at some point, this much ass kissing would become embarrassing; especially from someone who demands so much of same of those who used to criticized him. He must really feel beholden to Putin for something.

Wednesday, December 28, 2016

That credo would be the acronym "JFDI" coined by Chris Conder, a British Farmer, and revolutionary broadband provider. And in case you haven't figured it out yet JFDI stands for "just fucking do it;" where "do it," broadly speaking, is whatever needs to be done yourself, in cooperation with your neighbors, also just doing it themselves.

This is, in essence, what would be the foundation of loosely federated city states (where the term "city state" might encompass a broad range of small to medium large geographic areas) providing for themselves; at least for the most part. City States where the citizens are the managers, and maintenance people, of that city's productive capability; in charge of deciding what basics are produced, and then sharing the output equally to all who participate in that management and maintenance. Subsequently allowing each individual to make their own end use items themselves.

And if that sounds far fetched to you, you haven't been paying any attention at all at just how large the "DIY" movement on the internet is these days. Nor the degree of new technology involved with "DIY" that makes doing it yourself a great deal more than just plausible.

The real oddity here is how hard it is for everyone to see not only how Capitalism is screwing the rest of us, and the planet, but also itself, all to hell and gone. It's not sustainable. It makes us all ever more insane. And it sows the seeds of its own instability. If you are a thinking person at all, how on earth can you continue to support it?

Tuesday, December 27, 2016

The first veneer is the one that hides all of the suppressed rage out there. More and more of us it seems have been swallowing a day in and day out diet of what Jules Feiffer referred to as "Little Murders." The small bits of perceived indignity, humiliation, or some aspect of being ignored, and all combinations thereof. The result of this having people wanting to lash out blindly with a violent statement that "I matter;" however inappropriate that act might be (with sniping via a rifle being the primary there). What we see now, of course, as a cause for striking out are certain stress situations; road frustration, shopping frustration, voting frustration, etc.

It would be interesting to see if this list has been growing in any statistically significant way.

The second veneer is the one that separates the appearance of a growing, healthy economy, from the underlying reality of vulnerability. Wages are up a bit. Unemployment percentages are down. And as always, there is a lot of money being made by the usual suspects, even as who populates that list fluctuates a bit quarter to quarter. The vulnerability I speak of, of course, is rooted in the very nature of Capitalism's aversion to uncertainty. A tricky thing to keep track of when your focus can be both so short sighted, and so easily distracted (a big number in one part or another of the economy, usually without any meaningful context to tell us the depth of that number's true validity). A fact that only adds to the skittishness that underlies this aversion to uncertainty. The fact that we also live in a world where crisis events are commonplace does not help at all. The fact that they have also become commonplace at all, and the reasonable expectation that their frequency of occurrence may well be increasing certainly doesn't help either.

The interesting thing to keep in mind here is that it is the combination of Capitalism itself, with those who control it, that exacerbates all of the conditions that make both veneer's possible, and also so calamitous. If both parts of that combination were not so entrenched, as well as focused, on profit, or market share, or power itself, without limit, things might be a great deal different. The kind of limits that cooperative Capitalism, which is the ideal of Socialism, would encourage; as in profits being no more than 15% or so; prices tied more closely to inflation, as well as to supply; wages also tied to inflation and supply; and everybody accepting the idea that the rest of capital growth be invested back into research, efficiency (both economic and ecological), infrastructure improvement, and social services, with a healthy democratic process to keep all stakeholders involved in sorting out what are the ongoing priorities moment to moment, and how they should be addressed.

We see that ideal now as mostly naive precisely because it would not only have to be applied world wide, but that it also flies in the face of where human nature still is now after several hundred years of continuing with the economics of scarcity; which is precisely what unbridled Capitalism is founded on. That this might no longer have to be the case now that technology has advanced so far hardly matters to those who have become quite accustomed to, and consequently so incentivized, to keep things just as they are. And they continue this way because they think they can manage these veneers indefinitely into the future, controlling information flow, and manipulating whatever process that keeps the rest of us thinking we're still involved in decision making. But that is just more of the unbelievable foolishness that produces the conditions creating those very instabilities in the first place, and that make calamitous events ever more possible and frequent.

And so the facades of things being OK become harder to maintain even as the vulnerability to crisis increases. And people feel this whether consciously or not. Even as they are short changed here and there, in both small and large ways, and their outright frustration grows, they sense the ever increasing thinness of what separates us all between the facades and chaos. So much so that even apocalypse is a growth entertainment industry.

Monday, December 26, 2016

As the linked video here illustrates, simulated neural nets, via blindingly fast trial and error, can create the connection patterns that lead to what we see as creative output; whether that output is the ability to play chess, or construct music that is as similarly pleasing as what we create. What you have to remember here is that such engines will never have the connection to the feelings that made those music patterns desirable in the first place. Said another way, if they had been left to themselves without samples to start with they would have been unable to create anything but random patterns. Which is to say that we have a very unique type of connection to meaning space. Such synthetic neural systems can mimic the pattern recognition strategies we've developed, but they would never have been able to create what made them resonate with the feelings that these patterns have had for us from scratch.

You need to keep this in mind as we allow the current economic pressures of competition, competitive edge, and zero sum games of power, and the application of power (whether to preserve markets, or the resources to make and dominate markets) to delude us into thinking that such machines are in our interests to keep developing and improving. Certainly these machines will be able to eventually operate these mechanistic systems better than we do, but the motivations as to why, and for what ongoing purpose, will have little connection what we have as a meaningful or desirable. Especially if what you think of as meaningful is the balance of Mind and Rationality, with that which transcends objectified rationality (which is precisely what the feeling of powerful music is a part of). The kind of balance that would encourage thoughtful, loving structure (where we cherish both reasoned inquiry, and what it means to embrace each other, in all of the various ways, that express care, love and empathy).

The problem here is two fold: Not only is our current economic operating system not conducive to thoughtful loving structure, the final step in electrifying that system would make us, or anything related to what human interaction truly requires, irrelevant. Why have labor derived mass production for mass consumption when the machines can make things better than we can, but for which they would have no need to consume in such quantities. How could it not but leave the machines with little but one option to fall back on: self maintenance based on doing it better, and finding out how to do it better; a context in which I would think would put most everything biological into very specific niche categories of usefulness, of which irrational, chemically inefficient, vertically symmetrical bipeds, would not have much to recommend them for.

You need only to think about this a short time to see the pathetic irony here. The same insane thirst for power, which has kept us using this inhuman economic operating system, is unavoidably attached to developing the ultimate competitive edge machines, not realizing that we are a significant part of what will be in competition here. A competition we are doomed to fail at. Change the nature of how you operate, however, and you take away the need for such insane competition altogether. If we start striving to be better connected to each other, we will make learning about, and understanding the entirety, so much easier, and always within the scope of our type of sentient meaning space.

...When a fellow citizen criticizes one of his bonehead statements of policy, or some other crazy thing he's going to do, but with the leader of the nation that took direct hostile action against us he replies by heaping praise upon him. Even when there is legitimate evidence to suspect a "I'll help you if you'll help me" arrangement, and that hostile foreign leader continues to boast of his ability to counter our military, even as he continues to have that same military challenge ours ever more recklessly at every turn. Even then the Terrible Texter double downs again with more praise.

All of that, of course, is bad enough, but now we have what are ostensibly statements that contradict each other; as in (paraphrasing) "Putin's a great guy that we're going to deal with," juxtaposed with "Let's start another nuclear arms race because we can beat anybody at that game."

What can a sane person conclude from that kind of hyperbole. Does one part of his mind have absolutely no connection to the other? Can he make a declaration one minute and, in the next, forget about what the first implies so he can say something else in direct contradiction in the next minute? And perhaps even more importantly, does he have any grasp at all on the idea that offensive capability is created to address specific, clearly identified threats? Or that shooting his mouth off about a building program for the most terrifying weapon we have simply to boast of our productive capabilities might be genuinely insane? Does he think at all before he opens his mouth?

Obviously he does not.

And this is the person who has his finger on the button to launch those most terrible weapons in our inventory. This is the person who is supposed to put careful consideration towards what are our most pressing priorities, because spending money on one priority means not spending it on another. Are more nukes more important than our elderly having Social Security? Are more nukes more important than spending money on investments to address Climate Change? Or are more nukes, and a bigger military in general, simply more prospective profits for the money people who are his real constituency?

Friday, December 23, 2016

I have another, "you really want to read this", recommendation for another of Daniel Suarez's books: "Kill Decision".

Once again he puts a thrilling, plausible combination of technology, and a scenario that, after you get into it, you're going to start looking over your shoulder for signs of; all with a list of characters, and plot development that keep you on the edge of your seat.

What he presents us with here is a logical extension of what is already happening: ever proliferating drone aircraft operations, inherent limits in not only how you staff operations people to keep them going, but also of bandwidth saturation with all of the control links to keep remote control machines doing useful things, creating pressure for alternative control schemes. And into that he adds the other logical extension of already in use, software implementations of the autonomous control strategies of insects like the Weaver ant (that companies like Amazon are using to control the logistics of products to and from regional fulfillment centers).

This is where you get thrown into a new realm of buzzwords, and technical details. Things like "stigmergy," "stigmergic propagation rates," and self dispersive communication channels that mimic neurons for weighted input signals. A realm where the autonomous agents use simple sets of signal based actions to create self organizing, dynamic strategy sets for the swarm as a whole. Cheap agents in this case, easily assembled from off the shelf, commercial components, that not only provide three dimensional mobility, but, once weaponized, create killing swarms that are scary on a whole new level (where even an aircraft carrier battle group is threatened).

And as scary as the swarms are presented here, challenging a crew of top notch Spec Ops people, what's even scarier is the larger implications of warfare conducted in this manner. Warfare suddenly freed of the age old limitations of the human element; No combatant body counts. No standing armies required. And the ability to be applied with complete secrecy as to who is the actual attacker. If you add to that a targeting capability that uses all of the data collection of our new "big data" world, and the analytic capabilities that provides, and you get a police state with a big stick that would have made Orwell shit his pants.

I mean, just think about it. With everything you do now identifying you in so many ways, making it possible to not only know where you are in a given moment, but also where you're likely to be in the future. They won't need thugs in the night to come knocking down doors, and throwing a sack over your head to disappear you. Just a quiet drone to fire a silenced weapon of some sort. And there wouldn't be anyway to know who was actually behind the attack.

I swear now, I'm beginning to feel like Tommy Lee Jones's character in the movie "No Country For Old Men." Only in this context, though, it's not just the increasing ruthlessness of actors in a particular theater of our war on drugs that is so daunting, it is the whole matrix of increasing threat scenarios that faster changing technology, increasing greed, and/or lust for power, and a planet of decreasing resources, and ever larger populations, provides. So many aspects. So many technical details. And all of it interacting ever more complexly. And even more perverse, I guess, is that so much of it can be just as entertaining as it is frightening.

That is, of course, Social Security. And we are not talking chump change cuts here I can assure you. These will be big, and a great deal more than that conservative euphemism "painful." As the DailyKos.com puts it:

On the 8th day of December, 2016, Rep. Sam Johnson, Third Congressional District of Texas, Plano, Texas, introduced H.R. 6489 to essentially cut 27% from the benefits already paid for in the Social Security Trust Fund, which could possibly be worth as much as $5 trillion:

Johnson’s bill includes an assortment of benefit cuts including raising the retirement age to 69 (equivalent to a 13.5 percent across-the-board cut), changing the benefit formula (9 percent average cut), and slashing the cost-of-living adjustment (13 percent average cut). Some long-lived beneficiaries could see cuts of up to 74 percent. . . .

The Johnson bill disproportionately hurts women and low-income workers who had employment gaps due to caregiving and unemployment. And it hurts those who had uneven earnings during their wage-earning years. Johnson disingenuously claims his plan is motivated by an interest in extending Social Security’s trust fund. But he then turns around and eliminates the taxation of benefits on high earners—the very people who can afford to pay a little more.

I placed this post in conjunction with Keith Olbermann's commentary of the proposal because 1: he puts it into meaningful context (as he usually does), and 2: However partisan you may think Mr. Olbermann's commentaries are, they are always based on actual facts, and reasoned deductions based on those facts.

The point here is to show you once again, one more aspect of what our Lord of the Tantrum Text, and the Trumpedlicans that now suck up to him, are going to cost you; and by you I mean most of us middle to lower income working folks, and retired people. The folks who are supposed to be the bedrock of populism. And they are going to do this even as they cut taxes again to supposedly encourage investment (to make more things that most of us won't be able to afford).

Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Not if all of us, in conjunction with the communities we live in, took to distributed, localized farming. The kind of farming that would make nearly independent "City States," in a more loosely defined Federation, possible. The kind of "City States" where we could be our own managers, and maintenance people, balancing automation with personal involvement, to make the basics we would then have a share in. The basics that we would then make our own end use items ourselves, thus changing the whole notion of production and distribution.

And we could do this without any further need of money; freeing up the real currency of the future, which is the free flow information.

...Of corporate practices, and/or output, once we shift to the reign of our Lord of the Texted Tantrum? Or will that roll away as well. crushing a good deal more than just the poor sap who bought a brand he was sold on trusting?

If you are sanguine in this you are whistling in the dark only the best minds of "Manufactured Consent" could construct; clinging to the thought that, if you don't see it coming, perhaps it won't hurt as much.

I point him out now because it is interesting to note that, even after all the requisite boot licking, and ass kissing of the Lord High of Tantrums, he still gets dispensed with. And this is interesting not because Christie became mired in controversy. It shows how the L.H.T. can get former adversaries sucked into his brand and then still be treated as the whims of his ego dictates (just review the cringe factor for Christie in how he was treated in joint campaign appearances). How could somebody like this resist sucking in the other "Weathervane" holders of conviction of the Republican Party (you know, those guys whose bedrock beliefs twist in the breaking wind of convenience) so ready to abase themselves in pivoting again; thinking that their own bit of strategic licking, and kissing would get them something in value in return. Only to see themselves either tossed aside because those prostrating actions were all that were really required of them by the L.H.T., or kept on because there was more humiliation to be had in giving them post they criticized just as they once criticized their new lord (as with Rick Perry with a department he wanted to get rid of, but whose name he couldn't remember).

You would think that this would be a cautionary to anybody thinking of hooking their aspirations of gain to the capricious nature of this guy's commitment to "his word as bond."

Seriously, even when it's formalized in an actual contract he finds ways of screwing most of those foolish enough to take such commitments seriously. And yet people seeking their own personal agendas still sign on. An amazement to say the least.

A good number of the American electorate signed on as well, though, in this case, seeking only meaningful change. The really sad part there, however, is that change is indeed coming, but it will not be for the better because, in this context, it will be our best interests that will be thrown under the bus of this man's single minded drive for personal aggrandizement.

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

With another billionair to become secretary of the Army, filling out a roster of already selected super rich, as well as just ordinary rich, members of his cabinet, this new story, about the tantrum meister making it clear he won't support legislation to force transparency in company CEO pay, should surprise no one. Why anyone would have expected anything else is still an amazement to me. I just hope those of you who did vote for him, and those, even more baffling, who still support him, are ready to steel yourself in preparation for a lot of disappointment.

We will resist using facts, reason and a peaceful resolve that won't give up. That man, the treasonous usurper of an office that used to have giants walking its halls, will be continuously reminded of what he really is. And sooner or later, either through our efforts, or his own self serving actions, the truth will become obvious; even those who still support him.

Monday, December 19, 2016

1. She ran a terribly uninspiring campaign.
2. She had no real answer to the very real deficiencies of a economic operating system that is now patently obsolete.
3. No real Answers meant nothing of hope to offer to a lot of folks who felt they were not being listened to.
4. Fake news propaganda, of lot of which is instigated by the Russians, has a significant number of quite ignorant Americans chasing after fever dream conspiracy fantasies.
5. Email hacking, and the selective release of same, in coordination with #4 above may well have tipped the balance for some key electoral vote states.

The separate issue of the hacking, and Russian interference with our political process, as it relates to a foreign state taking hostile actions against us, is one that needs a very serious response, using all of the economic, and diplomatic, and intelligence tools we possess. An issue made all the more difficult when the ostensible President Elect has very clearly made common cause with the leader of that hostile foreign state; an act that, all by itself, should be grounds to consider his being unfit to serve in that office.

Trying to lay Hillary's defeat only, or primarily, at the feet of the Russian hacking is wrong, and clearly counterproductive. The bottom line problem for Liberals is that they have, as Republican Lite politicians, become stuck in the process of making themselves ever more irrelevant. Which is precisely why Mr. Sanders was starting to have such appeal. The danger there, however, is in thinking that these semi Socialistic reforms of Capitalism will have long term positive effect and staying power. Obsolete is obsolete no matter what type of reform you might want to put on it.

Saturday, December 17, 2016

In this case it is making you pay a good deal more for very necessary drugs. The point to emphasize here is that, inefficient though it may be, government, be it either federal, state or local, is currently the only thing between you and being fucked over in one form or another.

Like a lot of you I don't particularly relish the fact that government is all we have to watch our backs (public, non profit organizations do a lot to sper government on, but in the end, it is usually government that is the one that actually does something about it). I would much prefer we took responsibilities for ourselves to make, and manage, our own protections. This, to me, is a big part of what it means to be a Libertarian. Unfortunately the only way to ever do that effectively is to start over with a completely new economic operating system, and the social organization to work with that system.

That being said, however, does not change the fact that, for the time being, government is all we have as a counterbalance to the power of big corporations, and Big Money. When you elect someone who promises to get government out of your lives you are being led down a path that has little to do with the best interests of the citizenry, and a great deal to do with corporate power maintaining itself. And of course it's almost always some form of more profits, and less scrutiny or control.

You might want to keep this mind as you continue to pay more for anything that is essential either for staying fed, staying healthy (getting poisoned, or injured, unnecessarily is just as bad as not getting the medicine you need), getting educated, or keeping a roof over your head.

A civil complaint filed by 20 states accuses the companies of conspiring to artificially inflate prices on an antibiotic and a diabetes drug, with executives coordinating through informal industry gatherings and personal calls and text messages.

Friday, December 16, 2016

We already know he wants to get more of the states around his boarders into Russian dominance again. And he's got the armor to do it with. Should we care? Shouldn't the Europeans be doing more to defend themselves?

As to caring or not you must first ask: does our word, once given, mean anything (because that is what a treaty is)? Does the establishment of tyranny on people who have made it clear on what they think of Russian "protection" matter? We spent a lot of resource, and other needs not met, during the Reagan years saying it did. It was also an important part of who we were during world war 2. That we also didn't have the political will to tax ourselves appropriately to pay for it without a lot of added debt certainly didn't help much. Any more than following suit in Iraq or Afghanistan has done. Which then begs the question: Do the powerful want their cake, and not be bothered with the bill as they eat it too?

As to whether the Europeans should do more for their own defense is certainly a valid question. Not made any easier by the fact that may well have done so already but we're just not made very aware of it. But even then, maybe they could still do more? Still a valid question, but one that is something a reasonable people would sit down with them to talk about, and see what could be done. Not something you would just pull up stakes on and walk away from.

Consider, though, what may well already be in the works. The Russians surreptitiously move special forces into another baltic state. They put on different uniforms and suddenly declare themselves local militia rising up against Western puppet governments. It worked quite well in the Ukraine after all. But now, of course, he has more leverage to take advantage of. He has oil to sell, and an American Secretary of State who would now be anything but displeased at the thought of getting access to it. Trump is already there to decry, once again, the insufferable shiftlessness of lazy Europeans who won't defend themselves. And he will have all the cover he needs in the confusion of whether it's a genuine indigenous popular uprising or not. How easy then to just pick up stakes and walk away.

He can then, ironically or not, have the populists who voted him into office congratulate him for not getting us entangled in another foreign mess others are responsible for, even has he continues tax breaks for the rich which he will spend little of on those populist supporters. He will do that because how else might he pay for increasing those tax breaks, as he has already indicated he intends to do.

The bottom line? Our word will mean a lot less to the rest of the world. A new dictator will be given free reign in Europe, and a great deal more instability, and uncertainty will be added to the world scene. If this gives you pause there might be hope, but I'm still not very optimistic.

With Trump now possibly backstepping on the hacks by asking "why didn't Obama do more about it," can we conclude he's taking the evidence more seriously now? Maybe. Anything is possible after all.

The assumption there in that question, though, is that he didn't make a deal with Putin, and so had some right to at first find it ridiculous. And now, because he supposedly weighs things so carefully, if only eventually, he might be taking another look. And in taking another look, and allowing for the possibility that the evidence might be interpreted as it has been, he now looks to question the interpretation. Thus giving us a new response of (paraphrasing) "if it was that suggestive why didn't Obama do more in reaction."

Whether Obama should have done more, as well as whether he should be doing more now, is a completely different question, the answer to which is a resounding "Hell Yes!" That he didn't, or that the Democrats now in general aren't doing much about it, just as they sit back meekly in regards to other Trump's offences, is certainly related to the veracity of the charges, but only in the sense that the obvious magnitude of them has them shaking in their boots about the overall consequences of doing the right thing. And in that one has to figure that its various combinations of fear for risking their own careers, as well as fears about rocking the boat in general with the electoral process, and the chaos that might rise from doing the right thing.

The nbcnews.com article below also suggests plausible further considerations that the outgoing administgration believed the polling too much and took refuge in the belief that Hilary was destined to win anyway so why risk boat rocking at all. That this might be plausible, or even the truth, though, does nothing, in my view, to get them off the hook. This was still political cowardice and unbelievable timidity to act in the presence of the clear and present danger Trump has demonstrated from the get go.

The bottom line as far as Trump is concerned, however, is that this is not at all likely to be a pivot to accepting the truth of the hacking. He already knows it true. His throwing whatever doubt he can back at Obama, should people start accepting these findings as truth, is simply a means to keep as much doubt going as possible, so as to make sure attitudes never resolve enough for action to be demanded. And that folks is what you should be focused on.

Thursday, December 15, 2016

There are some good reasons to believe Russians had something to do with the breaches into Democratic email accounts. But “good” doesn’t necessarily mean good enough to indict Russia’s head of state for sabotaging our democracy.

...Now that the usual suspects from Silicon Valley have gone to Trump Tower to, at least symbolically, kiss ass.

These tech giants, vaunted so much simply because they made a shit ton of money, are no more than what Emmett Rensin declares them to be in the article linked below. And if you take the time to read the Daemon series of books you will see the real "disruption" they supposedly instigate is in keeping the rest of us from creating any real change. After all, what would be the point of having billions in digital counters if things were to change fundamentally.

In any case, though, you should really take the time and read Mr. Rensin's piece here.

These trends are dismal, and show no sign of abating. As the economy has slowly recovered from the Great Recession, wages have scarcely budged. Income gains since 2007 have flowed almost exclusively to the richest 1 percent.

...That we got Putin's personal attention in the attack on our most basic institution.

I'm sure that Mr. Trump would have expected no less when he made the deal for what he, I'm sure, just considered a service for a good cause. He would think that, of course, because he would see nothing involved here but his own self aggrandizement. That it might also be somebody playing him probably never crossed his mind. Just as what this will ultimately cost the nation never crossed his mind.

And as the rest of you out there sitting back and do nothing to stop this debacle you ought to give some thought to just how pleased Mr. Putin is right now; to not only so easily fuck with us and get away with it, but to also stick it to the man who (in name only) wrote that book "The Art of The Deal."

This man is single handedly working to dismantle a fundamental relationship between our national security institutions and the office of the Presidency, and how that relationship is supposed to work. And whether you agree with all of the priorities, or methods, of those institutions, you cannot dismiss the importance of the relationship itself.

If a worthy holder of that office had real concerns about how those institutions worked he would meet with them, find out more about what they do, and how they do it, and then see if the concerns he had had actual merit, and what might be done about it. And he would do this behind the scenes to prevent the kind of wholesale dismissal that Trump has currently propagated. A dismissal that serves only those who seek to thwart our best interests.

Trump however, as a self centered sociopath, doesn't care about anything but his own inflated sense of omnipotence. That would be bad enough to question his fitness for the Presidency, but he has gone even farther. He has made common cause with one of those very same foreign actors who don't have our bests interests in mind at all. He has made them out to be admirable, and worthy of our friendship even as they seek to undermine us. And there can be no doubt that he has received tangible gain from this behavior from that foreign power.

If this had been a Democratic President, say four years ago, and the same evidence were at hand, the Republicans, and far right in general, would all be foaming at the mouth to have that person's head on a pike, let alone simply seek to declare him unfit for office. And at this point I have great difficulty deciding which is worse, that the Republicans now turn a blind eye to the whole affair, or that the Democrats seem to be simply sitting on their hands, dumbly waiting for someone to tell them what to do.

One is left absolutely disheartened that so much of our leadership class is either clueless, spineless, or completely duplicitous to what is now going on. History is not going to look kindly at any of the players here; assuming there's anyone left to write an objective history. And if you are not questioning yourself as to how much you have worked to make your ire known to those who represent you in Washington DC then you made yourself an accomplice.

About Me

I am retired now, but I used to make my living as a Systems Analyst\Developer.

As my real passion has always been ideas, writing, reading, social change and music I am devoting myself to all of these. The primary focus, however is on social change.

It is my firm belief that Capitalism is obsolete. It has been rendered so because of electrified information systems. Not only do these make human skill as a commodity absurd, they also turn information into money, and money into information. At the very least, this reality makes representational Democracy virtually impossible because it can longer move freely. As a commodity it is necessarily subject to the net gain requirement in any exchange. As such information flow is seldom conducted for the benefit of the receiver.